


in the summer silence (i was getting violent).

by ftwnhgn



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Lovers, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Possibly Unrequited Love, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24708595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftwnhgn/pseuds/ftwnhgn
Summary: Two men, one church, and unspoken layers of history between them. The summer before the apocalypse, things shift for a moment.
Relationships: Jonas Kahnwald/Noah | Hanno Tauber
Comments: 9
Kudos: 91





	in the summer silence (i was getting violent).

**Author's Note:**

> this is basically me just wanting to get all my little sheep in order before season 3 comes around and fucks over the timeline yet again (or maybe is this mirror world noah here? who knows! I dont!) the trailer included jonas still having hanno’s letter and what can be assumed to be mirror!noah being shown after his notebook, so I bent over backwards to write something. also, this basically is the stranger and noah only, but they do know their actual names, duh. one of them just doesn't like hearing it, is all. 
> 
> can be seen as a companion piece to my other story, but deffo works without having to read that first! 
> 
> edit: as mentioned, this was written before s3 aired, and in line with my other fic this means that noah and agnes are not related to each other (or hannah, ugh). 
> 
> title: glass animals - mama's gun  
> working title: noah got a back tattoo bc of jonas and the show just brushed over it. pt. 2.

_Lay with me, my dear, in the evening clear.  
I’ll be dreaming in my paper-pale skin._

*

 **i.** ****

He is washing the blood off his hands, the basin tainted red while the paleness of his skin comes back to light in the developing absence of the red that used to cling there before. It is routine, as much as scrubbing your fingers raw from getting your own blood entirely off them can be, but he has gotten used to it in the same way he has gotten used to many other things over the years. The callouses lining the lines and creases of his palms, the fading ink on his back that becomes less black and more and more this blue undertone that only seems to shift and move along with his muscle as a reminder that it still exists rather than that it is a part of him. Beliefs line his skin and are etched onto it, growing up and growing old with him, him growing weary of them, it is another cycle he seems to be entirely caught up in, but this one is one that he can at least ignore half of the time. There are no mirrors in the bunker and there aren't ones in the church either except for a single one in his bathroom, so he never worries about seeing his mistakes displayed in a way that could catch him off guard. No, he has made it a lesson to teach to the world, a lesson lining every bone of his body, that there is no need to examine failure — to examine loss — when you are not ready or prepared for it. There is enough hurt in him, he does not need to pour salt into those wounds because of his own wilful ignorance.

Once his hands are clean, he dries them on the towel and dries his face as well, giving himself one last look in the mirror before he turns off the faucet and leaves the bathroom. Sometimes he wonders why he is still doing what he is doing, the pointlessness of it so apparent and so evident in every passing moment, that he can’t even look at himself anymore. And yet he keeps doing all these things — for his daughter, for his sister maybe too, as little as he remembers her and as burning her memory is. Not for the travellers anymore, at least not in the way he used to twenty or thirty years ago, but for himself, maybe. Or for some entirely other reasons.

Sometimes he wondered if he could ever say them out loud, those reasons, those motifs that he can’t deny even when he tried so for years and years, but that persisted through everything. Through Adam’s taunting and demands, through the vicious work he was meant to do and did so every time no matter how sick it made him feel until he didn’t feel sick about it anymore, through the loss and the howling of the wind across the steeple of the church, through his time in Winden and his time away and his time coming back again — always coming back again. It felt more like returning to someone than to somewhere, more like finding a person than finding this place again. He knows he is meant for this, he just can’t say anymore what it is. What this _this_ is that keeps him in three loops all at once, that has him travel and work himself to the bone and bleed and bleed and bleed, and lose and lose and lose until he loses himself. Until he lost himself.

Winden does have a hold on him, strong like a damned vice, and damning him to this place all the more than the mission itself already would have done. His daughter lives here, his wife — _his wife?_ — lives here in every version of herself, his family is rooted to this place in such an irrecoverable way that draws him to this town more than any purpose ever could.

(That is a half truth. His purpose has always been more than just imaginary, than just an ideal. His purpose has always been something concrete and tangible, something alive and breathing, something tying him to this church and to this life and to every disaster that unfolds like a scaffolding breaking down under the weight of one soul. It can be quite heavy, a soul.)

There is nothing to be done about it now, everything he needed to do has already happened after all, and while he has never been good about biding time — Hanno less so even than Noah — he has made his amends with it. He has made his peace with knowing there are some paths you can only walk as far as a line allows you and everything beyond that is a mystery, is simply not in your hands, and all you can do is give yourself over to the trusty strength of time and faith and let it take care of it for you.

So lost in these thoughts, rationalising of each of his dubious missteps up until now, he nearly misses the figure in the back-row of his pews when he enters his church again from the side entry. Jonas looks as worn out and tired as he always does at their age, something heavy and undeniably broken inside of him and about him, and it takes every fibre in Noah not to walk right up to him right this second and investigate again. Not to get the upper hand, neither out of some dubious intent to hurt him, but because there is a broken bird lying on his doorstep and he never could turn away from one of those. Something his ego could never resist, least of all when it has been the boy he heard so much about and then the man he couldn’t let go of no matter how hard he tried.

Jonas sits inside of him like a vice, a worse chokehold than any of his mistakes or actions could ever have on him, because he is at the root of all of them. He is the fire Noah keeps burning in the cold of winter and the heat of summer alike. He is the blue of an ocean Noah would readily let himself be swallowed up by, the cold tide of it something he’d willingly let himself sink into. Because he wants to, because he hasn’t wanted anything as much as he wants this for years now.

(A vice. As simple as that. As undeniable and unspeakable as that, too.)

He takes a minute or so, straightening the sleeves of his black shirt, fingers touching the collar of it against his throat and observing Jonas quietly in his hunched form in the pew and cataloguing the dark tones of his blonde hair, the unmistakable pain in his eyes that never goes away and yet speaks to the soul of a saviour, the strength of his shoulders despite the world’s effort to push them down and let them crumble. He looks like a martyr. Like a thing Noah can’t save and yet wants to save. He looks exactly like he always does and after those minutes of reminding himself of it Noah finally makes his move.

Of course Jonas looks up when he stops by his pew, the man sitting at the far edge of it and Noah taking that to lean against the wood of the row in front of him, looking at the other with an intent he is not ashamed enough anymore to hide. If Jonas is here, he very well has his reasons to. He is not God, not yet at least, but he very well has a working mind that allows him to explain his gestures the same way even the Holy Lord manages to. He might possess this quality to be larger than life when he wants to — usually more prominent in the defiant tilt of his chin when he was still a teenager and Noah had a name he can’t hear anymore and could look at nothing else but the tilt of his head and the clenched tension in his jaw for an hour, minimum. But he is still so very human, and so very humane, and the toll his travels had on him might have brought him closer to an almighty ideal, but they have also pushed into him and pulled something out of him on their way out again. That spark, maybe, because the defiance is still there if a little more subdued. But that spark is merely a flicker now.

Maybe this is what happens to all of them when they get older. Jonas is just put under the magnifying glass due to being a victim of his dire circumstances. Well, make that the two of them.

“Are you going to tell me why you are here? It’s not like you are a regular guest — and I am not going to guess, just so you know,” he finally speaks up and just like he expected he gets the electric blue of otherwise tired eyes directed at him. It is always like a shock, to be at the receiving end of this gaze. Noah can feel it down to the sinews of his body, he can already hear the memory of it singing in his blood.

Only now does Noah notice that Jonas doesn’t wear his parka or the sweater he usually wears underneath, the heavy material of both probably too stifling for the dry heat of the middle of summer pressing into the town from all sides. It is better inside the church, the cool stone and wood helping to keep the worst of it at bay, but whenever Noah is in the woods or works in the yard he can feel the sweat run down his back and stench even the waistband of his trousers in a reminder of his work cleaning the bunker. And he does not need any more reminders of that when he tries to act out his civil life. Jonas seems to have been a victim of the weather too, dressed in a light blue button down and a white shirt beneath, something so unusual to how he usually appears that Noah’s gaze lingers on the ensemble for maybe a little too long to just be polite, but so struck by any difference to Jonas that he is allowed to notice even after all these years.

Summer cuts him open and burns the flesh of him, but it holds nothing to the man sitting in his church now. Nothing could ever bury so deeply inside of him and tear him apart in such an effective, such a delicious way, that he can’t deny to want, to need it.

(He has always been an acolyte at heart. He just chose the worst path to show it.)

Jonas answers his gaze for a moment before dropping it again — a habit as old as time itself possibly — but for once it does not take him ages to answer. Maybe this is the weather weighting on him, maybe Noah has just struck serendipitous gold without the need for a mine or a rainbow. He is not going to question it though. He has learned when to count his blessings and leave it at that.

“I don’t know. Would you believe me, if I say that I don’t know?” he asks in return, his shoulders not hunched up to his ears for once either, but his hands are wringing each other in his lap. Noah can’t help but notice that too.

The priest shrugs in return, more nonchalance to the gesture than to maybe any other thing he has ever done. “Should I? We do not have a good track record of believing each other,” he replies, going for the path of honesty, trying to dig through the virtues he knows are somewhere inside of him. Definitely not all of them, definitely not strongly, but some of them are there inside of him somewhere.

Jonas looks back at him, not at all a stranger to Noah, and the hint of a smile crosses his weathered face. Something amused, maybe, or something disbelieving. He’s never made it quite obvious what he is feeling or thinking, having subdued so much of himself that he can’t seem to dig it back up again.

(Hell, make that two of them.)

The image of Jonas like this twists the knife just further and Noah wonders how he could have lost himself so much in one single person, how he could fall into the trap of aligning his obsessive tendencies for a purpose with a person he had never even met back then and hardly sees regularly now, or has in the past years since the first time they met. His eyes drop to Jonas’ throat, the remnants of a scar there that always reminds Noah that he should have cleaned that up better, that he had the chance to patch the other up in a way that would have ensured less scaring. But then again he also doesn’t know what to do if he’d look at Jonas’ throat, even now with some of it hidden beneath the collar of his shirt, and not see himself there. He likes it too much, knowing he can see himself on Jonas whenever he looks at him. It stirs something almost entirely hidden away, something more animal than man, in him. It is the only time he can feel it, when he looks at Jonas and finds the ways he etched himself onto him, has made room for himself in Jonas’ history.

He’s never said he’s a good person or a good man. But neither is Jonas, neither is anyone he knows, so he thinks he’s even with the reckoning of the world.

“No, we don’t. But you can’t blame me for not trusting you,” Jonas finally retorts and the hint of that barely-there smile is back on his face again. Noah is aware he is serious, they don’t trust each other as far as they can throw each other, but somehow the words sing in his blood again. A hum like gospel, like a hymn, like prayer. A sound so rare he would not hesitate a second to consider it holy. To let himself be blessed with it.

Noah takes the cue and moves into the row Jonas is sitting in, leaning against the back of the bench a row ahead. They are directly across from each other now and the priest has to look down to meet Jonas’ expectant eyes, the way they burn and burn with curiosity and mistrust, the way they could burn him to ash and he’d let it happen.

No one has ever said that you have to _like_ what you’d live or die for. You just have to be particularly devoted. That is the secret to it. To everything, really.

“I never said I need you to trust me,” he finally amends, moving his head from one side to the other in a slow rolling movement that makes the bones in his neck crack before he looks at Jonas again. He needs those break from him, when he can gather himself and his wits again. It’s why he prefers their distance despite how much his heart suffers under the strain. He’d rather take the strain than total defeat.

“That is … that is actually true. You never did. You just said a lot of other terrible things,” Jonas says, leaning his head back against the pew now to not have to crane his own neck too far when he wants to look at Noah. This is definitely not a comfortable place to be in. But neither of them is moving and Jonas is looking at him quietly, so quietly, for a long time that could make up for the time Noah has stared at him from across the room, as if he wants to catalogue Noah the same way it always happens in return. And maybe this is exactly what he is doing, pouring salt into the gaping wound inside of Noah, because he says next, “I wanted to be here. I don’t know why, I don’t even like this place. But there’s something about it — I wanted to see you too, I guess.”

It colours every monochrome static in Noah’s heart blue, taints him with the color of the ocean and makes him nearly drown despite having two solid feet on a steady floor, and he tries to keep the stuttering intake of his breath hidden behind the back of his hand. They usually only see each other out of necessary timing, a need that justifies the measures that need to be taken on either side of this cycle, but they never see each other because they _want_ to see each other. Fate has always taken care of this, and this chance, a chance Jonas took willingly, feels like a change of the perimeters they exist in.

Noah’s world couldn’t be turned upside down as much as one could try, but he definitely just found a new axis going through it. Not as obvious as the one in the middle, but undeniably there for him all of sudden either way, and now he can’t look away from it anymore. Or look anywhere else.

“You guess? You’re _here_ , Jonas, in my church. There’s no guessing left to it. You made your decisions. I always thought you are the man to stand by them,” he answers after having recovered from that slight shock, the same monotone level back to his voice as there usually is. He might burn, but he’d be the last to show the flames that singe him, least of all to the man with the match in his hand.

Now Jonas drops his gaze, looks at his hands for a moment. “I suppose you’re right about it.” He might not look at Noah, but the defiant tone in his voice tells the priest everything he needs to know. The drop of his head is no punishment or submission from himself, but for Noah.

“So, you wanted to see me. Do you want to confess, Jonas?” Noah asks, this far easier than anything else about this moment, and he gets the fiery blue back to look at him. It makes him bold, this pure and essential attention Jonas gives him right now, and he takes a small step forward in the minimal space between them. Jonas’ knees are brushing his now, the rough material of his jeans against Noah’s uniform, and there it is — the tangible proof for him that always put him above God in Noah’s understanding of the world. Jonas might be the martyr in this tale, but Noah is the servant ready to die by his hand, ready to end by his word. As much misunderstandings there are between them, this is painfully clear, incredibly obvious.

“Confess?” Jonas repeats, tilting his head farther back against the bench to not break the way they are looking at each other. There is something in the summer air now, even as cool as it is inside the church, that stirs something inside Noah alongside Jonas’ words, something painful and horribly selfish and something that he wishes to dig his own nails into to draw new blood. Let him run red, let him run red and blue now, he’d be the last to say no to it if it would be at the hands of the other man.

(An acolyte. Maybe he is just pathetic.)

“Confess,” Noah repeats in the same instance that Jonas reached out and puts a hand on his side, the rough of his palm spanning over Noah’s ribs, and it burns worse than the direct meeting of their eyes ever could. It burns endlessly, it burns like a vice down his throat, like the undeniable pull of the sun towards the sky. He could catch fire like this, he thinks, and has to put one hand on the bench next to Jonas’ head to steady himself. “Yes, confess. What are _you_ doing right now?” He asks, voice hoarse, but one brow arched as he finds himself standing between Jonas’ knees now.

The pads of Jonas’ fingers press into his skin despite the black fabric of his clothes lying between them and if Noah wouldn’t have become nearly as good as Jonas with keeping himself under wraps, he could have sworn he would have let something as embarrassing as a sigh escape him at the feeling, maybe even some words he could never take back. Jonas’ hand curls around his side then, releasing the pressure on his ribs and going for a strong grip on his waist then, and Noah has the good idea to let his other brow follow suit and arch that one too. He bites down hard on his tongue, grinds teeth against teeth, not to say anything more.

Silence is a virtue too.

“What am I doing?” Jonas asks in return and reaches out with his other hand to put it against Noah’s cheek, cradling the left side of his face with the ridge of his palm against the priest’s jaw, and it is so tender and yet so assured that Noah might have to throw in the towel for good and either pass out from his lack of air or just leave the entire church to escape himself from the memories of this moment that will haunt him for the rest of time, cycle back to him alongside it to torture him. He already knows. _He already knows._ And yet he leans his face into the gesture, the touch so mesmerising that he can’t help himself to be smarter than that, the beating of his heart so incredibly loud that he nearly misses Jonas saying, “I am confessing. Like you asked if I wanted to. I came all this way, I guess I do.”

Jonas waits there for a moment and Noah nods in an unspoken permission for him. And then Jonas moves the hand on Noah’s cheek to the back of his neck and pulls him forward and against his lips with such force that has Noah stumble forward, barely holding himself up as his elbows hit the pew behind him. He bites down harshly against Jonas’ bottom lip in response and all he gets as an answer is an exhale similar to the one he fought to hide. Jonas’ hand is still on his waist and pulling him so far in that he has to put his arm around Jonas’ neck not to topple forward and onto him, bending his knees already to accommodate their uncomfortable position. The air around them shouldn’t burn like this, he comes to think in the middle of their teeth colliding and the heat of Jonas’ own breath being swallowed by his mouth, and he shouldn’t feel like drowning without any water in sight besides the basin of holy water at the front of the church. Maybe this is his baptism, maybe this is his coming home. There is no new name to him, he already has that, but something entirely new sets free in his chest with the touch of Jonas’ rough hand against the side of his face and the press of his palm into the trim line of his own waist.

It burns. Oh, how it burns and burns and burns. Whenever Noah thinks it can’t get worse, it absolutely does. Their lips find each other again and again, and he can feel the steady warmth of Jonas’ body beneath his own, and he can’t help but let a hand settle around his throat, right against his scar, and feel the hitch of Jonas’ own breath right into the slide of their kisses when he does so, the thrill of it so evident that Noah could die for this alone. He presses his palm more flatly against the scar tissue, his fingers gracing Jonas’ chin and holding him there, and both seems to work in his favour when Jonas leans a little up into the kiss, tries to chase each of his movements with his own.

It is like a dream, so far more than prophecy because it is real, but still so much like a dream.

Jonas breaks away from him, pants “I kept your letter.” right against Noah’s mouth, the blue of his eyes vibrant and clear as he looks up at Noah when he says it, something so fiercely protective and bordering on possessive stirring in Noah chest without him feeling any fear to name the animal by the name it has been given, and he can’t help the stutter of a laugh that lets loose past his teeth in response. It breaks against the shore of Jonas’ lips, gets lost against the cut of his jaw and finds a hiding place beneath Noah’s hand against his throat, and Noah follows it with his eyes again before he leans back in and replies, “Don’t lose it then.”

Jonas looks brilliant and so alive beneath him, how Noah has never seen him before. He is aware he might never see him like this again.

**ii.**

Afterwards they are leaning against the back wall of the church, looking out at the graveyard and the forest beyond the church’s grounds, Noah dressed in only his trousers and the undershirt he wears beneath his uniform, and Jonas having foregone the button-down he was wearing before. The July heat is more mellow than it was for most of the day, but it keeps the weight it has had for the past few days and wearing more than far necessary feels pointless in this weather.

Jonas has confessed after all, just in his own way. The press of his hands leaving marks and the hushed whispers of his voice hidden between wood and skin, swallowed by the colourful spectrum of cascading light from the mosaic windows at the other end of the room. It has been a sight for sore eyes, definitely, and one Noah won’t forget so soon — if he’d forget it at all. He doesn’t think so. Jonas has never been a man of many words, but he seems to have found a way to translate them into something for safekeeping that works for him anyway, and far be it from Noah to deny him the clarity and freedom that comes with a confession.

“I am going to leave again,” Jonas says into the evening quiet and Noah looks over at him from where he is leaning against the wall. They are close enough that their shoulders could brush with any movement, but not close enough for it to be suspicious if anybody sees them, if they themselves see these versions of each other.Noah can’t even dare thinking how much worse it would turn Hanno, and how little of that he wants to see.

Noah’s gaze gets unanswered but it worries him less than it did before, and he studies the profile of Jonas’ face for a moment before turning to look out over the yard again. If they don’t get some rain soon or he is going to travel soon, then he could be assured that the grass wouldn’t get any greener. The metaphorical humour of it is not lost on him, but he refrains from sharing it with the man by his side.

“Well, I am not surprised. You did keep my letter after all,” is all he comments on Jonas’ admission, knowing full well he is not going to be the person to stop Jonas from become this strange version of himself he is whenever he travels through the cycles. All Noah hopes is that Jonas is not going too far back in time. Noah does not have the energy and neither the time to fix the mess he would leave in his wake in Hanno’s presence. It has been bad enough, resilient enough, when Hanno gave him the letter. The memory is seared into Noah’s mind like a particularly bad sort of punishment and he wishes not to add to that more than what is absolutely necessary.

(As he said before, he doesn’t have to like any of this. He does not.)

“I did. It’s — it’s important,” Jonas states and Noah knows he is looking at him without having to check.

The threads of their path are dwindling to frays again and he can feel it, the chokehold around his heart growing stronger again with the impending absence, the undeniable distance returning between them and turning him into a worse man yet again. There seems to be no end to that road, it seems. Or if there is, he has yet to find it. Maybe hs is looking the wrong way, maybe he is looking where he shouldn’t be looking.

Shrugging again, he lets his shoulder brush Jonas’s now, the shock of it much less daunting than it was in the church a few hours ago, but it is not less prominent with the way it echoes in his body. Something he is quite aware of as well is how treacherous his body is to him — how much it wants what it can’t have. How much it wants to bend until he breaks. The discord between his head and his heart is absolutely staggering, and might cost him his life one day. Dwelling on it might not do him any good or give him any peace of mind. 

“There’s important information in it,” Noah agrees, taking one last drag of his cigarette before dropping it to the ground and grinding it into the earth with the heel of his boot, turning to look at Jonas while he does and catching him looking at his foot in return.

Jonas looks back up at him, the ocean of his eyes as bottomless as it always is, and showing Noah easily that whatever intimacy has been existing between them in the church is now gone. He is not totally hostile again, but Noah can see him withdrawing already. It doesn’t come as a surprise. He came, he confessed, he unburdened himself, and now he can leave. Noah has seen it a hundred times before in his church, but the sting of this time sits fresh in his chest. Because of Jonas, because it is Jonas.

“No. I got it from you.” Jonas’ palm brushes the back of his hand before he takes a step back from their conversation. He doesn’t say goodbye, he never does, but Noah can recognise when it’s happening now. And it hurts just the way he knew it would. Undeniably. There is no blood on his hands but he is already bleeding out again, for all he knows.

He can’t tear his eyes from Jonas and when the stranger turns around to leave Noah follows the line of his back until he is gone out of the priest's view. Only then does Noah go inside, remembering that he should wash his hands after having smoked.

On his way to the bathroom, he picks the light-blue shirt up from where it’s been left on the floor between the pews. The knife in his chest twists when he looks at the fabric in his hands and he wonders if he could dress his wounds with it, wonders how long he could keep it before it becomes another mistakes, wonders if this could be a mistake at all. Decides that his hands might be stained with red irrevocably despite how often he washes them or how much he tries to singe his fingers, but for once he can’t find his failure.

Later, he folds the shirt and puts it in a drawer in his desk. He locks the drawer twice. 

(A devoted man will get where he needs to be in due time. He doesn’t need to be good for that. _He just needs to be devoted._ )

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up to talk about andreas pietschmann still looking sad in every trailer and hoping jonas gets one (1) small break in s3 or, idk, leave a comment if you want! I love to chat and I don't bite and I love to hear people's thoughts! n e wayz, see u for s3 when shit hits the fan. 
> 
> friendly reminder: you are loved, you are enough and you will achieve great things. you are right just the way you are, a living and breathing thing. keep going. i know times are tough right now, but you keep doing your best, you keep showing up for yourself and other people. thank you, thank you, thank you. the world would be sadder without you in it.


End file.
